Ask the chancellors: who knows who?
Updated on 29 March 2010
Will the economy decide your vote? As the clock ticks down to election 2010, Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable do battle as Channel 4 asks the chancellors.
One is old enough to be another's father. Two have changed their names. All three believe they can steer Britain's economy back into the black.
With the national deficit, tax rises and public spending set to dominate the next parliament - will it be Alistair, Gideon or John?
Fresh from the budget Alistair Darling is hotly pursued by shadow chancellor George Osborne, who at 13 changed his name from George to Gideon as a "small act of rebellion".
Then comes a former Labour councillor called John. He is better known as Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat money guru and king wit of the Commons.
Osborne, 28 years Cable's junior, could become the first Conservative chancellor since Ken Clarke and the youngest for more than a century.
The Tories insist cutbacks are needed to manage Britain's huge debts, while Labour and the Lib Dems agree investment and jobs are the main route to recovery.
(Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling - Reuters)
Alistair Darling, Labour
No obvious candidate for socialist militancy, the "solid student" from an Edinburgh private school caught the political bug during his time at the University of Aberdeen.
Darling's former professor Mike Meston told The Times he recalled "an excellent learner who thought for himself... level headed and remarkably normal."
The Respect party's George Galloway, the firebrand MP thrown out of the Labour Party in 2003, has a different story.
"When I first met him 35 years ago, Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh," he has said.
Indeed Darling is known to have been friends with Scottish MP the late Ron Brown, known as "Red Ron". He famously broke the House of Commons mace during a debate about Margaret Thatcher's poll tax in 1987.
Intriguingly the young "Trot" and member of the International Marxist Group had a Tory MP for a great-uncle, Sir William Darling who represented Edinburgh South in the 1950s.
Darling began his rise through the Labour ranks when Neil Kinnock made him opposition home affairs spokesman in 1988. After the 1992 general election he became a spokesman on treasury affairs.
Darling held a range of posts in the Tony Blair administration. He entered the cabinet in 1997 as chief secretary to the treasury.
He then moved through the Department for Work and Pensions and in 2002 replaced Stephen Byers as transport secretary.
A constant presence in all the New Labour cabinets, Darling finally took over as chancellor from Gordon Brown in 2007.
In 2008, he let slip his love of Canadian singer and cult icon, Leonard Cohen; a man, like the chancellor, famed for being downbeat. On the title track of his 1992 album The Future, Cohen sang: "Give me back the Berlin wall, give me Stalin and St Paul."
Darling moved onto (lyrically) safer turf when he later revealed he had updated his iPod with Chris Martin's Coldplay.
The chancellor has been married to former journalist Margaret Vaughan, known as Maggie Darling, since 1986. They have two children, Calum and Anna.
Calum Darling is following in his father's footsteps. He is currently president of Aberdeen University Labour Club.
(Shadow chancellor George Osborne - Reuters)
George Osborne, Conservatives
George Osborne: 18th Baronet of Ballintaylor or the fresh face of Britain's economic recovery?
David Cameron's right-hand man has so far chosen Westminster over Waterford.
His roots in Anglo-Irish aristocracy remain tucked away on a CV which takes in a failed shot at journalism and a history degree from Oxford.
The son of Sir Peter Osborne and Felicity Loxton-Peacock, the boy who became George in an act of teenage rebellion (he was born Gideon) also owns a few rolls of wallpaper at family firm Osborne and Little. The company's client list includes Bill and Hillary Clinton.
It is interesting, then, that the young heir was given a "demyship" from Magdalen College, a scholarship originally set up to help poor students. Oscar Wilde was also a Magdalen demy.
Osborne's friendship with David Cameron, like so many Westminster alliances, began at Oxford. Personally as well as politically close, they are godfathers to each other's children.
The pair were both members of the notorious Bullingdon Club, a boys' society whose members took part in drinking rituals and acts of vandalism. Its founding members destroyed 468 windows at Christ Church College on the club's first night in 1894.
With the "Buller" behind them, Osborne and Cameron took their friendship to London where they were part of the "Notting Hill set", fictionalised by Rachel Johnson in her book Notting Hell. She is the younger sister of another former Buller boy, London mayor Boris Johnson.
Osborne and Johnson junior are both former editors of the Oxford Student magazine, Isis. They are in fine literary company including John Betjeman, Graham Greene and Sylvia Plath.
After missing out on a job at a national newspaper, Osborne jettisoned his journalistic dreams and entered Conservative central office. He has described one of his first roles, as official Tory observer at a Labour conference, as the worst job he ever had.
Osborne then worked for former prime minister John Major in the run-up to the Tories' 1997 election defeat. He also advised Douglas Hogg (of moat-cleaning expenses fame) before working for then-leader William Hague as a speech-writer.
In 2001 he became the youngest Conservative MP in parliament, winning the Tatton seat made vacant by independent Martin Bell who had ousted "cash for questions" Tory Neil Hamilton five years earlier.
Osborne sailed into a political storm of his own when in 2008 he was accused of trying to solicit a £50,000 donation from Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska.
It followed "yachtgate", the name given to a meeting in Corfu organised by Osborne's childhood friend Nathanial Rothschild (another ex-Bullingdon boy). Osborne, Deripaska and Labour's Lord Mandelson were all on the guest list.
Once back in the UK, Osborne leaked details of the gathering and claimed Mandelson had heavily criticised Gordon Brown.
Angry at his friend's indiscretion, Rothschild hit back with allegations the shadow chancellor had, like Mandy, been on the Russian's yacht - and had asked for a donation. An Electoral Commission inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Osborne also came under scrutiny over reports he accepted large donations from Lady Serena Rothschild and entrepreneur Hugh Sloane. And in an interview with the Daily Mail he admitted that his wife, Frances Osborne, does the household sums.
Despite these slip-ups, there is little doubt Osborne - through his connections - has successfully placed himself at the top table of international business.
He is believed to be a member of the mysterious Bilderberg group, a secretive network of US and European business leaders who meet annually to "shape" the international agenda. It is said "future leaders" are selected along with influential figures from large multinational firms.
This link would be good news for Osborne's prospects. A pre-president Bill Clinton attended the 1991 summit and a 39-year-old Tony Blair was on the invite list in 1993.
At 38, Osborne might lack experience but he would certainly be a useful addition to this powerful circle. And what would the youngest chancellor since 1886 put first on his Number 11 iTunes playlist? His favourite song is Madonna's Like a Virgin.
(Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable - Reuters)
Vince Cable, Liberal Democrats
Vince Cable: comedian of the Commons or trusted navigator through economic stormy seas?
The Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman has earned both reputations. Now, at the age of 66, another title is swinging into view for the "late flower in the political swamp".
Could Vince Cable be our next chancellor? A hung parliament could certainly raise the possibility of a fairytale final chapter in Cable's political story.
So who is the pensioner on the 0734 from Twickenham to Waterloo and could he really be heading for Number 11?
John Vincent Cable was born in York in 1943 to a Tory-voting mother.
He read natural science and economics at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge where he was president of the union.
Cable joined the Labour Party after graduation. He then worked as finance officer for the Kenya government between 1966 and 1968.
During this period the 23-year-old Cable married Kenyan Goan Olympia Rebelo, at a time when mixed raced marriages were still regarded as unusual. The couple had three children.
Cable then moved to Glasgow where in 1970 he unsuccessfully fought Glasgow Hillhead for Labour. In 1979 he sought the Labour nomination for Hampstead, losing to Ken Livingstone, who did not go on to win the seat.
In the 1970s he was special advisor to future Labour leader John Smith who was then trade and industry secretary in the Callaghan administration. Cable quit Labour for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) when it was formed in 1981.
Cable is former head of international economics at Chatham House. He was also chief economist for Shell in the 1990s. His straight-talking analysis of the UK downturn won him widespread respect.
In his book The Storm, published in 2009, he set out a masterplan for surviving the global economic crisis and earned himself the title "sage of the credit crunch".
At the height of the Northern Rock crisis, Cable said "the least worst option" would be to nationalise the lender.
Three months later, in February 2008, Alistair Darling did just that. It calmed the jangling nerves of Britain on the brink. During this period Cable famously described Gordon Brown's "remarkable transformation from Stalin to Mr Bean", the first of many quips from "Cable the Commons comedian".
Cable's first wife Olympia died in 2001 from breast cancer. He remarried, to Rachel Smith, in 2004, and wears the wedding rings from both unions.
Writing for the Daily Mail in 2009, Vince Cable revealed his admiration for Jade Goody, saying "she may have saved the lives of hundreds of young women", adding that his first wife "would have thanked her" for raising cancer awareness.
Cable unleashed his ballroom dancing talent on the nation in 2007, when he appeared with singer Alesha Dixon on Strictly Come Dancing. A Twickenham resident, Cable commutes by train into central London every day.
Ask the Chancellors is on Channel 4 at 8pm, Monday 29 March.
